Canada’s Lonely Standard-Bearers in the N.H.L. Playoffs

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Montreal is the only Canadian N.H.L. team in the playoffs.CreditJean-Yves Ahern/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

By Jeff Z. Klein

April 14, 2014

MONTREAL — Perhaps it is just a random quirk of probability, but the numbers are eye-opening nonetheless. For the first time since 1973, only one Canadian team — the Montreal Canadiens, fittingly — qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs, which begin Wednesday. Six of the seven Canadian teams will not play in the postseason, while 15 of the 23 teams based in the United States will.

“Everybody in Canada will be following the Montreal Canadiens, whether they like it or not,” said Michel Vigneault, a sport historian who teaches at McGill University and the University of Quebec at Montreal.

It has been a long time since this hockey-loving nation has had so barren a spring. But then again, it has been a long time since a Canadian team lifted the Stanley Cup — 1993, when Montreal won it.

“It’s a hard pill to swallow, because the truth is, hockey is encoded in our DNA, right?” the Canadian comedian Ron James said. “We can’t not enjoy it. It’s like sex: Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.”

Only two months ago, Canada rejoiced as its men’s and women’s Olympic hockey teams rolled to gold medals at the Sochi Games. While there is nothing wrong with Canadian hockey per se — after all, many of the biggest stars on American teams are Canadian — something does seem very wrong with the country’s N.H.L. teams.

Analysts offer several theories for the problem: Canadian teams lose too great a portion of their profits to struggling American clubs because of revenue sharing; owners like Ottawa’s Eugene Melnyk and Vancouver’s Francesco Aquilini meddle too much; Canadians pay too much attention to hockey, creating too much pressure.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, the most valuable team in hockey, are a smoking ruin. They were in playoff position until an eight-game losing streak in March wrecked their chances. Last week, they hired as their president Brendan Shanahan, a Hall of Famer from the Toronto area who never played for the Maple Leafs and has never run an N.H.L. team. They hope the infusion of fresh blood will lead them to their first Stanley Cup since 1967.

“I’d love to see the Leafs hoist the Stanley Cup on TV,” James said. “In color, instead of black and white.”

The Ottawa Senators have reached the playoffs 14 times since entering the league in 1992, even making the Cup finals in 2007. But last summer, Daniel Alfredsson, their captain of 14 years, left to sign with the Detroit Red Wings. His reason: Having entered his 40s, he wanted a better chance to win a Cup before he retired.

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Fans showed their feelings about the Maple Leafs, who squandered a chance at the playoffs.CreditLynne Sladky/Associated Press

So he will be playing with the Red Wings against the top-seeded Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs this week, while his former Senators teammates are at home.

The Edmonton Oilers, once the team of Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier that won five Stanley Cups, have in recent years lost consistently enough to have the No. 1 draft picks from 2010, 2011 and 2012 in their lineup. The Oilers finished last in the Western Conference again this year and missed the playoffs for an eighth consecutive season.

Just above the Oilers in the Western standings this year were their Alberta neighbors, the Calgary Flames, who have missed the playoffs five years in a row.

In fact, the bottom four teams in the West are Canadian. A Jets team returned to Winnipeg three seasons ago, and it has fallen short of the playoffs in all three. The team can take solace that the original Winnipeg Jets, now the Phoenix Coyotes, did not make the playoffs either.

The Vancouver Canucks had been the most consistent Canadian team of the past 15 years, finishing with the league’s best record in 2011 and 2012 and reaching the Cup finals in 2011. But they may be the biggest mess of all this season. In chaos under their first-year coach, John Tortorella, they fired General Manager Mike Gillis, hired the former Canucks star Trevor Linden to run hockey operations and seem a long way from returning to contention.

“We’ll just have to take the high road and bask in the glow of the hockey golds we won in Sochi,” said Rick Mercer, a Canadian satirist and television host.

The teams’ failures have real consequences, including lost revenue for businesses near arenas and lower television ratings. The decline in ratings is a particular problem for the cash-strapped national broadcaster, CBC, which on Thursday announced the layoffs of 657 employees.

The Canadiens will go forward as the country’s lone standard-bearer. In the first round, Montreal, one of the original six N.H.L. teams, is facing a team from the hockey hotbed of Florida. And that team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, who have been in the N.H.L. since 1992, have won a Cup more recently than any Canadian team, in 2004.

Helping carry Canada’s burden is Montreal goalie Carey Price, who has a little practice at such things. He was Canada’s gold medal goalie in Sochi.

It was a natural question to ask of Price: Will people across Canada unite behind the Canadiens in the playoffs?

“I think we’re probably going to see a lot of Canadians cheering against us,” Price said Saturday night. “A lot of sour fans are probably going to root against us.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Canada’s Lonely Playoff Standard Bearers. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe